Dearborn Co. Retired Teachers Send Hand-Made Clothes To Foreign Missions

Press release from Dearborn County Retired Teachers Association  (Dearborn County, Ind.) - The Dearborn County Retired Teachers continue to make pillowcase dresses and shorts to send to missions around the world. To date over 3000 pillowcase dresses and 1000 shorts have been hand-delivered to these foreign missions. Retired teachers Gerry Barber and Jean Vaughn coordinate these efforts. Volunteers are needed to help with the assembly of the dresses and shorts.  One does not need to be a retired teacher or a seamstress to help with the construction of the items.  One only needs a heart for those children living in impoverished areas around the world.  The group meets Thursdays, 10:00-2:00, at the Lawrenceburg Community Center. You are invited to bring a sack lunch and enjoy the camaraderie. The Timmy Foundation Global Health mission will soon receive fifty dresses for the children in Ecuador.  Founded by Dr. Charles Dietzer, the Timmy Foundation was named for the founder’s brother who passed away in infancy.  It provides health care to communities without access to medical services.  Retired teacher Marita Cziek, a seamstress for the pillowcase dress project, currently has a niece working with three doctors, three nurses, and twenty students from Indiana and Purdue Universities.  Patients walk from miles around to stand in line for the medical services. Fifty dresses and fourteen pairs of boys’ shorts will be headed to the Dominican Republic in May with a medical mission from Taylor College. Love the Hunger, an orphanage in Haiti headquartered in Louisville, KY and coordinated by Dale and Tonya Oelker, has received pillowcase dresses and shorts from the Dearborn County Retired Teachers and flip flops from the Ripley County Retired Teachers Association.  This mission works to provide nutrient-rich meals to the malnourished. Bright Christian Church, under the leadership of Mark and Julie Gulley, has been going to Haiti since they were teenagers.  They now have grown children and grandchildren.  Lifetime Missions, of which they are a part, builds homes and churches for the residents of Haiti.  The original pillowcase project started with the needs of the children and mothers in Haiti.  In addition to the children, king-sized pillowcases are used to construct dresses for the mothers so that they can share and then attend church services. Children in Brazil have received dresses at two non-denominational missions:  Project Life and Amazon Outreach.  Again, children here lack basic necessities.  Missionaries Magno and Ana Lanham actually spent one day working with the ladies making some of the pillowcase dresses which they were able to take back to Goiana.  Smile Train, a part of the Amazon Outreach, works with children with cleft palates.  Short term missionaries have been going on mission trips for the last eighteen years. Christy Sopcisak, a missionary teacher for Fellowship International Missions, is a former student of retired East Central High School teacher Pat Thompson.  Sopocisak directs a school for the children of Togo.  Pillowcase dresses and school supplies were sent to these children in Africa. Fifty dresses and another fifty pairs of shorts were sent by Tanner Valley Methodist Church with Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child boxes. Casey Foreman, Back2Back Ministries, serves children, including children with HIV, in a family-care situation. The need is great.  All one needs is a little time and a heart for the less fortunate in our global community.